1.
Despite
the boasting of the “Yes” group that at 93% or 3,079,966 votes they scored a
landslide victory [in the March 16-17, 2013, constitution referendum], the 5.4% or 179,489 scored by “No” is a very significant
minority. In most urban areas the no vote was over 7% of the vote, scoring more
than 1000 votes in constituencies. The voter turn-out, at 3.3 million or 55%
of registered voters or slightly less than 50% if one considers all eligible voters,
was not overwhelming.

2.
Although
we had aimed for a better performance, the 5.4% of the no vote is still
commendable for several reasons, including that the referendum was not free and
fair:

a.
The
no vote came up against a combined and unprecedented unity and mighty of the
ruling classes. Reflective of how the COPAC [Constitution Parliamentary
Committee draft] constitution is an elite capitalist peace charter, there was
an unprecedented coming together of elites, local and international, in support
of “yes”. This included the three biggest bosses’ parties [ZANU-PF, MDC-Tsvangirai,
MDC];
key state organs including the judiciary and police; all the main church and
religious leaders; big business; the state and private media; most NGOs, donors
and the Western imperialist governments. With such support the “Yes” group had
huge resources, including the millions in public funds unconstitutionally
deployed by COPAC. It enjoyed a virtual media monopoly with the private media
demanding exorbitant payments and the public broadcasters, ZBC/ZTV blacking out
the no case excerpt for a few isolated appearances at the end. A compliant
judiciary played its role by dismissing on technicalities challenges brought against
the blatant violations of basic democratic norms, such as inadequate time to
campaign and fair media coverage. On the contrary, the No campaign literally
ran this campaign on a few thousand dollars largely made up of contributions by
a few participating trade unions, organisations and individuals.

b.
The
referendum was ambushed. The three weeks to campaign was grossly inadequate.
The No campaigners worsened their situation by failing to come up early with a
united-front approach to the campaign, with some organisations preferring a
looser arrangement of each organisation running its campaign. The possible impact
of a united-front approach was shown in the last three days before the referendum,
when the resuscitated united front was able to put up posters and leaflets in six
towns and adverts in two dailies.

c. The
trickery of the politicians of conflating the referendum with the general
elections, meant many people saw the referendum merely as a means to get to the
elections. With only 70,000 constitutions allegedly printed, most people did
not even see the draft. Many people are tired after a decade and half of
political and economic crisis, and are desperate for things to get better. As
one person said, “Tangoita kuti zvipfure”.

3.
Finally,
the unusual high voter turn-out in rural areas, indicates that the spectre of
the June 2008 presidential election run-off is still with us. Various reports
confirmed that villagers were systematically forced to go and vote and record
their voting with [President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front] ZANU-PF structures.

4.
Thus
there were two key factors behind the overwhelming victory of the Yes group. First,
the dominance of ruling-class ideas which was facilitated by the current low
levels of consciousness in the working classes. In current circumstances of low
working-class struggles, few strikes, huge unemployment and weak and divided
trade unions, it is easy for ruling-class ideas to dominate, especially where
there was unprecedented ruling-class unity. Unlike in the 2000 referendum,
where working-class militancy was high after the 1997-99 wave of strikes and demonstrations
and the ruling class was divided, this time around intra-ruling class unity was
high.

This started with the Government of National Unity and has been cemented
by Mugabe’s abject surrender of any remaining radical nationalist economic
agenda in the COPAC constitution through a neoliberal property clause which potentially
reverses the 51% indigenisation and empowerment agenda, full compensation of
foreign Western farmers and restoration of market relations in agriculture with
resettled land now convertible to title deeds. As Karl Marx said, the dominant
ideas in society are generally those of the dominant economic group. Second was
the unfair electoral environment and fear and intimidation orchestrated by the ZANU-PF
regime for whom the referendum provided an ideal opportunity to reactivate its
June 2008 strategy of coerced rural voter turn-out as a dress rehearsal of the
coming general elections.

No vote significant but ZANU-PF regime
must go!

5.
A
national vote of 7% or more than 200,000 people, if one includes a portion of
the spoilt votes, rejecting such an overwhelming display of ruling-class power is
significant. By comparison is the 0.6% or 73 out of 12,000 voters who supported
the ISO in the 2003 Highfields by-elections, which represented the pioneering
attempt by radicals to fight ruling-class domination and hijacking of working
people’s movements. For many among the no voters, this is still just initially
an expression of disgust at the blatant disregard of basic democratic norms by
elites in the referendum. For a certain core though, as represented by some
radical unions in Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (Concerned Affiliates), a
layer of students and radical middle classes as reflected in the National
Constitutional Assembly (NCA), it reflects a breaking away from the Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) hegemony, a fact that has stifled the emergence of
a radical, anti-capitalist alternative in the Zimbabwean crisis. What was
particularly striking was the vote in Harare. In the five provinces with over
20 constituencies each, the no vote got 1000 or more votes in only four to six constituencies
and in the remaining four smaller provinces “No” got a 1000 or more votes in
only one to three constituencies. But in Harare/Chitungwiz, of the total 29
constituencies, 26 of the constituencies had 1000-plus no votes. While in eight
provinces, the no vote had less than three constituencies per province with a
voter percentage of 7% plus (usually urban centres, with only Bulawayo scoring five
constituencies out of 12), the Harare figure was even more striking. In 28 of
the 29 constituencies, the no vote had 7% or more. This is roughly the margin
that made the difference between Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the
2008 presidential elections, and denied Tsvangirai an outright victory.

6.
This
potential significance of the small no vote was not lost on Mugabe’s spokesperson,
George Charamba, who writing [under the name Nathaniel Manheru] in his column
in the [state-run] Heraldof March 23, observed,

The votes NCA attracted may have been
too small to dent the “Yes” vote. But they were numerically big enough to
launch a movement, a party … Numerically bigger when you consider two points.
While the two main parties got loyalty votes, [Lovemore Madhuku, leader of the National Constitutional Assembly]
got the thinking vote. Potentially that makes his numbers very many, magnified.
He commanded a leadership stratum, actual and potential and that augments the
quality of his numbers. I said potentially because the same strength is also
the same weakness. It is easy to become another Enoch Dumbutshena and his
elitist Forum party (or another Makoni)… You looked at the geographic spread of
the NCA vote, and you were struck by the national spread, of course with an
indicative concentration in Manicaland, Madhuku’s province… But Madhuku has
some following in cities, themselves locales for politics of the future.

7.
Thus
by staking their positions now, radicals have created a reference point for
future actions when class conflict in our society is likely to rise as the
crisis of neoliberalism and capitalism gets worse, especially with the
austerity neoliberal offensive likely to be launched after the elections. Contrary
to Charamba’s preferred option of a petite bourgeois-led third force opposition
party, the radical pole that played a crucial role behind the no vote in Harare/Chitungwiza
has the potential to become the cornerstone of a future anti-capitalist working-class
movement against both the neoliberal agenda and autocracy. This may open avenues
for struggles of revolutionary socialist transformation of society as we have
seen in Latin America.

8.
Radicals
in the working-class and student movements must not be tempted by the idea being
mooted by some and fanned by regime ideologues like Charamba of the vote no groups
forming an opposition party. Such party is premature. Let the ruling-class
politicians finish their business in the coming elections and get on with their
real agenda, an austerity offensive, under whichever party wins, but more
likely under another ZANU-PF dominated GNU. The latter increasingly looks the likely
election outcome given both the treacherous and corrupt conduct of the MDC in
government and the still uneven electoral landscape including the now obvious
fact that the ZANU-PF terror machinery is still intact and that the same
election officials, generals, judges, police chiefs who ran June 2008 election
remain in charge. And young people are unlikely to be voting. When MDC officials
asked 500 university students called to help in the referendum how many were
registered voters, only six said they were! Register-General T. Mudede will
certainly not be helping them to register. The MDC has massively blundered by
happily going along in a referendum characterised by a lopsided and un-free
electoral environment, and with the raid on Tsvangirai’s offices and arrest of
top lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, the real game has just started.

9.
However,
contrary to the lies peddled by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) that
ISO’s Munyaradzi Gwisai labeled Tsvangirai a sell-out who should be booted out
inthe coming elections, that is not our position. To expose the treacherous and
naive character of the neoliberal Tsvangirai leadership of the MDC and that, as
their JUICE [Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Environment] plan shows,
they will definitely accelerate neoliberal and austerity attacks against the poor
should they get into power is not the same as ISO saying there is no difference
between the MDC and the ZANU-PF dictatorship.

The latter is a tried and tested
dictatorship, developed over decades and whose hands are dripping with the
blood of thousands of genocide victims. Despite its nationalist economic
rhetoric, the regime, complicit with Western capitalists, imposed ESAP [Economic
and Structural Adjustment Program], the far-most far-reaching attack on workers,
the rural farmers and the poor in general, and does so today under cover of the
GNU. Its dictatorial and patronage tentacles are so invidiously spread across
all sections of society from the state itself to paramilitary groups like
Chipangano, that it completely stifles even the slightest modicum of bourgeois
democracy. We in the ISO, along with countless others, have suffered much from
such dictatorial actions including in the treason trial.

The ISO therefore
disagrees with NCA chairperson Professor Madhuku’s characterisation that the
coming elections are merely a competition between two dictators and it doesn’t
matter which one wins. For the working class, there is no question about it, as
the still overwhelming “yes” vote in the urban areas shows: Mugabe and ZANU-PF
have to go. And no progressive organisation worth its name can sit still and
celebrate the escalating regime violence against the MDC and other opposition
groups, such as the incarceration of Beatrice Mtetwa and the Glen View 5 [see http://allafrica.com/stories/201302201253.html],
just because Tsvangirai and co. blundered in the referendum. The truth is that
a Tsvangirai state will be much weaker than the current Mugabe regime, and thus
easier for the working classes to confront. Moreover, having removed such an
entrenched dictatorship, the working classes will be much more confident of
taking on the much less sophisticated, blundering and less credible Tsvangirai
regime.

Despite the commendable performance of the no vote, the overwhelming yes
vote in the referendum shows that the overwhelming majority of workers and urban
poor still have faith and illusions in Tsvangirai and the MDC. This is not
surprising after decades of ZANU-PF brutality, poverty and one-man rule, and
Tsvangirai’s important leadership of the 1997-1999 inspiring struggles.
Therefore for the majority of the working classes, Tsvangirai and the MDC’s
true character as abject servants of the rich, employers and imperialists, can
only be exposed by lived experience, when Tsvangirai and his neoliberal hounds
led by Tendai Biti and Eddie Cross are given real power. To push the trade
unions, students or social movements who have supported the no vote not to take
a position in the coming election will be seen just as good as supporting the
Mugabe regime, and most of their members will not accept this because they
still support Tsvangirai and MDC. This will be an infantile ultra-leftist
position that will lead to a dangerous isolation of radical unions and
movements from the rest of the working class and also the potential weakening
and splitting of movements and unions that could form the basis of an
anti-capitalist united front and in fact play the decisive role in the
post-election period against whichever government emerges. For the same reasons
the Bolsheviks had to support the bourgeois Kerensky regime against the
right-wing Kornilov coup attempt in 1917.

A new party is premature

10.
To
rush into forming a new party on the basis of the disparate no vote, and one
led by the middle classes, even if formed after the elections, will not take working
people far. Its ideological character as well as un-democratic DNA will be no
different from the MDC. It will merely be a popular front in which radical
trade unions, activists, students and socialists will be used to build another
broad church, which will eventually be dominated by capitalists and their
middle class lackeys. Working people need to look hard and learn the hard
lessons from how the MDC was hijacked by the rich. Rushing to form a political
party from the disparate groups that made up the vote no groups would
inevitably lead to another MDC disaster. Yes, its true that the working classes
may enter into tactical and temporary alliances with other classes and groups,
and this is something we are currently debating in the ISO. But what is
absolutely clear is that what the working classes need for real emancipation is
a radical, revolutionary anti-capitalist party that is completely ideologically
clear about the fact that capitalism offers no way forward for working people
and that only socialism is the alternative. A movement built on the
self-activity of the working class and their unions and organisations on a
regional and international basis. A movement built from the bottom to the top
and run on truly democratic basis and working-class control. That is the kind
of party we must strive to build.

11.
That
kind of movement is not formed overnight in a hotel conference room or an NGO
board room. It can only be formed in real concrete struggles in which the true
colours of activists, leaders and organisations are revealed, tried and tested.
Such concrete class struggles of the unions, of vendors, students, rural
farmers etc. are the real universities of the working class in which invaluable
class lessons and strategies will be learnt.

12.
The
agenda of the ruling classes is clear. As publicly admitted by the likes of MDC’s
Eric Matinenga and Mugabe’s George Charamba, another elite GNU beckons post-election,
with elections only useful for determining the share-out of power. The COPAC constitution
already accommodates this: a neoliberal property regime and an accommodating
political framework, with two vice presidents, an unlimited size of cabinet and
bloated parliament to give enough positions to the leaders of all parties.

13.
With
the ideological differences between the political elites now paper thin what
remains for the politicians is the agenda post-general election and the launch
of the austerity offensive against the working class and the poor, as hinted in
the golden handshakes of houses, $30 000 each and three cars to the outgoing
ministers, the new planned luxurious parliament and the MDC’s JUICE. Such an austerity
program will start with civil servants who have been denied the right to real
collective bargaining or political citizenship rights. It will also include
attacks on parastatals [public enterprises] whose employees are deemed to earn
too much and set a bad example for the rest of the work force, through the
acceleration of the privatisation agenda … The firing of Zimbabwe Eenergy Workers
Union president Angeline Chitambo is the opening shot in a battle sure to come.
But also to be expected are general attacks on the poor, including the informal
sector and rural farmers, as already is being done by the current GNU through
the removal of support and subsidies for rural farmers. The experience of the
cotton farmers and the starvation producer prices that have been imposed on
them are indicative. Continued attacks on students in the tertiary education
sector are to be expected, with the removal of state support for working-class
children through the cadet program likely to be fully scrapped, for now only
having been partially done so for first-year students. Dictatorship on campuses
will intensify as shown by recent re-appointments of hard regime figures in
colleges and universities. The local elites have no solution to the global
crisis of capitalism, and given their abject subordination to international
capital, whether of the Chinese-Asian type or the traditional Western type,
will mean continued massive de-industrialisation as globalised productive
forces pulverise the little nation-state based industry of Zimbabwe.
Joblessness can only therefore accelerate. The raising of petrol and diesel
prices opens up a massive attack on the poor that is likely to lead to the
raising of costs of everything from transport to food. The fuel increases, show
the route the elites will take: gravy train and golden handshakes for ministers
and let the poor pay for the crisis created by the rich.

14.
In
view of the above, the way forward for workers, students, vendors, ordinary
women, the youth and rural farmers is not rushing into building another half-baked
middle-class dominated political party, nor to take a disastrous sectarian
approach in the coming general election. Rather it is to use the momentum
gained in the referendum campaign to up the struggle for their bread and butter
demands and do so in a united-front manner that brings our different organisations
in solidarity.

The referendum has revealed which are the real serious and
radical unions, organisations and movements. It is these that need to come
together and continue working together, not as a political party but as a
radical anti-capitalist united front of struggle, to continue the fight against
both poverty and dictatorship. The way forward is not to rest back or demobilise
post-referendum, but transfer the energy gained so far into accelerated united
bread and butter struggles and crucially to deepen radical working-class political
and ideological consciousness among activists. These are the real urgent tasks
of the day.